


a land flowing with milk and honey

by LadyCharity



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Brothers, Gen, Loss, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 03:37:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12740235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyCharity/pseuds/LadyCharity
Summary: After Asgard is destroyed, Thor is crowned king, and he cannot stop being afraid.





	a land flowing with milk and honey

**Author's Note:**

> ...Guess who's back. 
> 
> Probably the most plot-less and whump-less fic I've ever written for this fic, and yet, I'm quite pleased with it. I've never really wrote a Thor-centric fic since 'in her garden grew hyacinths', and evidently I've been missing out. 
> 
> I genuinely never thought I'd ever write Avengers fanfiction ever again. Taika Waititi has single-handedly redeemed MCU for me. And I predict that Black Panther will revive me. 
> 
> I hope that you all enjoy!

Thor does not look like Odin; Hela was right about that. He has Frigga’s gold hair, her cheekbones, and her loyalty. He also has her easy sense of humor and fondness for creatures he could find in the garden. If Loki was shaped by Frigga, his clever magic begotten by hers, then Thor was like an imprint of her, her thumbprint left on the glass as proof that she was once here. Loki is her child, and Thor is her ghost.

Loki looks like neither of their parents, but he has Odin’s sharpness, his carefully balanced words and shrewd silence. He also has Odin’s cold calculation and interest in theatrics. Thor was Odin’s second-born, but Loki was Odin’s echo, his petrichor, Odin’s cause and effect. This is what they carry of their parents on this solitary ship, because they did not have the time to run back to their home, and grab the old tapestries of their families, or Frigga’s writings, or Odin’s armor, or the sheets that may still have their scent in the down.

Thor had looked back when Asgard crumbled into salt and stardust, and felt himself do the very same. Loki swears that he did not look over his shoulders, to stand in awe of a home he both loves and hates reduced to a memory, but he had remained as frozen in place as the rest of them who could not take their eyes away. Loki would assume that it was better this way, because realms regularly are destroyed from a distance, so he rarely dwells on the consequences. He will assume that he is simply leaving Asgard on his own volition, that in some distant star the waters still roll and the white trees still shake in the breeze, just not in his galaxy.

Thor had not looked away. Sometimes, when he is supposed to be sleeping, he jerks awake, curled up against the wall because there are not enough beds and he refuses to claim one, and he feels his heart race against every inch of his skin as he imagines what would happen if this very ship had caught fire, if his people were thrown into danger again, if Asgard would be neither a place nor a people.

His reign has gotten off on a rough start, true--but he cannot imagine anyone being king without that pressing fear that they would fail. Thor had not forgotten the vision that the young witch from Sokovia had planted in his mind after all.

“You realise that all of this is technically at the fault of everyone else’s reign but your own, don’t you?” Loki says chidingly.

Thor does not realise that Loki is even trying to engage in conversation with him until he jolts, his head snapping up from the dashboard of the ship that is supposed to steer them to Earth. Loki watches Thor with a raised eyebrow.

“That’s right,” Thor says. “This is all your fault.”

Loki smiles, albeit mirthlessly, or at least Thor hopes that is the case.

“To be fair,” Loki says. “I didn’t father a magic death-monger.”

Thor wants to tell Loki that it is far too soon to speak critically of Odin, when his departure is still fresh. But there is a flash that passes Loki’s eyes the moment the last word left his mouth, a strange inward flinch as if he has pronounced something incorrectly, and Thor knows that there is no need to speak up.

“Anyway,” Loki says. “What good is a king who leads his people to despair?”

“I’m not despairing,” says Thor.

“Tell that to your reflection.”

“I thought you would think that it was rather becoming of me.”

Loki scoffs. Thor steers the ship in silence, noting the distance of the stars ahead. Earth would be a journey of several weeks, if days could still exist without a sun. The ship is too cumbersome for hyperspeed, and likely too cumbersome for the hidden pathways that Loki used to traverse.

“Why Earth?” says Loki.

“Have you any better suggestions?” says Thor.

“Well,” says Loki. “Svartalfheim is rather vacant nowadays.”

Thor snorts so loudly he nearly chokes.

“Am I wrong?” says Loki.

“There’s no water on Svartalfheim, either.”

“There’s water on this ship.”

“Not enough for eternity. And hardly enough even for this journey.”

The unease settles in Thor again. He has inherited the weight of his people from his father’s shoulders (and his brother’s), and he marvels, again, how it had crushed neither of them, because he is clinging to the edge of the dashboard as it strains on his back. He has led his people--and the freed slaves of Sakaar--onto this wild goose chase for a home, and he has not the slightest idea how they will make it to the next day, or the next, or the next. Only that each day is only given to him, if the Norns are merciful.

Loki clears his throat, but when Thor turns to him, he stops, as if he has remembered something he has forgotten to get done earlier in the day, before laughing at Thor’s face.

“Well!” he says. “Who put you in charge of steering this ship? Which relative’s statue are you going to crash into this time?”

Thor’s eyebrow twitches, but before he retorts, he realises with a jolt that this is Loki’s attempt to comfort him.

“Why do you stay here?” Thor says.

Loki raises his eyebrows, taken by surprise by Thor’s serious change of subject.

“Tired of me already?” Loki says.

Thor does not know why Loki lingers. If Loki really wanted to, he would find some unattended hub and shuttle towards the stars. He would find the control panel and silently steer the ship off course to pursue his own glorification. He is not the king of Asgard, and now that they are landless and stripped of dignity and glory, Thor doubts that Loki would want to. Loki has never been motherly towards the underdogs.

“I’m not keeping you as a prisoner,” says Thor. “Although you never truly finished your sentence--”

“You were the one who had let me out.”

“--There are at least two hundred hubs on this ship that you could pick one out and go on your way,” says Thor. “Unless you want to continue investing in the arts and commission a play about your glory, there is nothing I can give you. Why have you not left yet?”

Loki pauses, and then he hums. He laughs in spite of himself, if not a little bitterly, if not a little embarrassed.

“Frankly,” Loki says. “I have no idea.”

Uncertainty has never been more comforting to Thor until this moment.

-

It takes them a couple of days, but with Korg’s enthusiastic help, Thor collects the names of all the passengers on board.

There are less than five thousand Asgardians, and a only a handful of freed slaves from Sakaar. That imbalance alone is enough to make Thor uneasy. This ship is not big enough to handle any intolerance, but there is no island too small for discrimination.

As Thor pores through the records, he notes grimly how these names of halved families on the back of scrap papers and towels are now the first and only records left of Asgard. And of those names, which he notes are of common folk rather than the nobles he had grown up with and knew by childhood memory, Thor realizes with a slow, slow sinking in his stomach, that Volstaag, Hogun, Fandral, and Sif’s names are not among them.

It is a strange sort of death, one that is unspoken but can only be hollowly assumed, just a quiet acceptance that could drive Thor mad simply because it feels as if no one has noticed it but him. But who would notice it, when Fandral’s friend was Volstaag, and Volstaag’s friend was Sif, and Thor had assumed that if he would ever lose one of them he could grieve with the others? In one fell swoop he has lost them all, and on top of the weight of his people’s lives on his shoulders, solitary grief is heaped upon him.

Thor does not know how it must have transpired--if they had defended Asgard to the end from Hela, somewhere in the beginning, the middle, or the end, if they had been swept up in one of Hela’s many plagues, or if perhaps out of dreadful mistake they had been left behind, when the ship had taken off from the shores for the last time and not everyone had made it to the Rainbow Bridge. He tries not to imagine it, but sometimes his mind cruelly taunts him into it.

While they ration the food that is left in the Grandmaster’s ship, which is nowhere near reminiscent of Asgardian sweetmeats and stews, Thor finds his stomach suddenly harden, and cramming something as simple as soft bread into his mouth is enough to make him gag, because he thinks of his friends, and how he had not seen them in the long periods he spent traversing the stars for Infinity Stones, a journey that had led him nowhere and he should have just stayed home, since home evidently was not there to stay for long.

“It’s not poisoned, you know,” Loki says chidingly, when Thor audibly gags, and has to cover his mouth with his hand to force himself to swallow. “Drugged, maybe. But not lethally.”

“Would that be your doing or the Grandmaster’s?” Thor says.

Loki laughs. There is something frighteningly admirable in Loki, Thor thinks begrudgingly. Thor does not know everything that Loki has seen (and Loki does not know everything that Thor has seen), but it must take a level of either strength or numbness to grin after death, whether or not that was true in the inside. No, it is not good or right, but Thor wishes for it anyway.

Thor takes in a breath and forces himself to take another bite of the bread, which is by no means hard but tastes cold and heavy in his mouth. He only takes a small slice, because he had counted how much food they had left, and the number has hardened his stomach, as if to protectively shrink his appetite to make the rations last.

“You know,” says Loki. “The Grandmaster does keep a large supply of grapes on board.”

“Grapes?”

“He has a fondness for champagne grapes.”

Thor shoots Loki a look of suspicion, who shrugs with only a hint of mortification.

“Distribute it in the meals, then,” says Thor. “Make it stretch for about four thousand people.”

He pushes his slice of bread towards Loki.

“What?” says Loki. “Not to your taste?”

“I’m not hungry,” says Thor. “You can have it.”

“I don’t want it,” says Loki. “You’re skipping this meal too?”

“Don’t keep track, it makes me uncomfortable.”

Loki rolls his eyes. Thor looks away, in an attempt to diffuse the awkward tension between them. He watches his people’s drawn faces, as they gnawed at the bread and the slivers of salmon, sharing goblets of water between them. Their faces are hollow and dirty, swimming through reality as if it is a dream. Before him are all four thousand names that he has stacked in a pile in the pilot room, tired and huddled masses who belonged nowhere except for with each other. Forsettisdottir without Forsetti, Magnusson without Magnus, scraps of Asgard bleeding and sweating in this little ship.

“We’ll serve them at the funeral feast,” Thor says.

“What funeral feast?” says Loki.

“I doubt any of them has had a proper time to mourn,” says Thor.

“There are more dead than living to count,” Loki says.

Thor is suddenly caught with the desire to tell Loki, that his friends are dead. That Sif and the Warriors Three are gone, and that Thor’s heart weighs heavily because even though they were the bravest in the land he fears that they died in pain, crying out to one another. But the moment he turns to Loki, he holds his tongue. He fears that if he tells Loki, Loki will just shrug, and then continue with the rest of his meal. There are several things that Thor does not trust Loki with. His fresh grief is one of them.

“They need _something_ ,” says Thor.

“They need a king who will make it to tomorrow,” says Loki.

Thor does not know why this makes him laugh out loud.

“Are you nominating yourself?” he says.

“Do you wish that I would?” says Loki.

Thor raises his eyebrow, impressed by Loki’s audacity.

“Don’t make that face,” Loki says. “You were the one who told me that you no longer wished to be king.”

Thor laughs hollowly.

“I did,” he says. “That I did.”

Perhaps there is a level of him that wishes for someone else to take the mantle. Someone stronger, someone wiser, someone more just, who is not Odin, or Loki, or himself. But kingship is not a choice--it is an act of obedience. He has begun to understand this.

The hall is quiet, the people wordless as the breadcrumbs dissolve on their tongue. They cast glances towards Thor’s direction, silently desperate, and in the moment of weakness Thor thinks about how he is actually the second-born of Asgard, not the first, and perhaps he should never have been chosen to lead if it is not even his birthright. He should not have been chosen to be king, and yet he is.

“How am I supposed to encourage them when I can hardly feed them?” Thor says.

“Feed them with hope,” says Loki, “or whatever.”

Thor cracks a smile.

“A bit campy,” he says.

“I know,” Loki says. “I felt myself gag.”

Thor pushes Loki’s shoulder. Loki is solid under his hand, which lessens the tension knotted in his core. He has learned for a long time already that he cannot take for granted when people are there with him. In Loki’s case, it can be assumed neither better nor worse that he remains, but despite everything in Thor that tells him not to, Thor has missed his brother, and his family, and a sense of familiarity, that a piece of Asgard still remains for him when all else is gone.

“You are Asgard’s molten gold,” says Loki. “You just need to stand there and our people will be satisfied. That’s always worked in the past before.”

There is not necessarily bitterness in Loki’s voice. Perhaps watching noblewomen weep at his theatrical death every other day has quelled his insecurities, for now.

“You think?” Thor says.

He tries not to make eye contact with any of the people who watch him, as to not shame them in their silent questions. But he is not blind, even if he has half the vision he once had. They are waiting for relief, for the false alarm that their journey will take them only two days, instead of two weeks. He budgets, he takes account, he maps out the stars, he holds their hands when they come weeping to him. They wait for a miracle, but that is not what Thor specializes in.

“Idols have no voices,” says Thor. “They’re hollow inside. At some point, they must rust.”

“But they do a tremendous job of distraction,” says Loki.

A beat between them. Neither of them know very well how to be a king. Evidently they do not need a Jotun infiltration to prove that.

“Aren’t you the one who would inspire us to go on insane expeditions with inflated praise and excitement?” says Loki.

Thor tries not to think about the Warriors Three or Sif. He does not know whether to smile or to wince.

“Are you accusing me of eloquence now?” says Thor. “You’re going to have to try harder than that.”

“I’m not that much of a liar,” says Loki. “I’m saying that you aren’t a donkey. The Norns would strike you dumb if they did not want you to speak.”

Thor smiles wryly.

“I need more than words to get the people to trust me,” says Thor. “I need to make wise decisions. I need victories. I need--I need to give them a sign. Our people have gone through about two and a half kings in the course of two years. We’ve taken stability and we’ve made a joke out of it.”

“Go conquer a planet, then,” says Loki. “That’s victorious enough.”

“That’s not victory, that’s just petty,” says Thor. “Weren’t you the one who spearheaded military non-intervention as your platform?”

“Yes, and the people had adored me. Less taxes.”

Thor had not even begun to think about replenishing their supply, which he knew would soon come. They would land on Earth, eventually, and then what would they offer? What satchels of money and trinkets that scattered subjects stowed away to their  belt when they had ran were useless now, the insurmountable riches of Asgard worth nothing that even moths would want to eat through.

“Valkyrie,” Loki says suddenly.

Thor leans back against the glass window, with an appraising look.

“Yes?” says Thor.

“She’s one of the Valkyrior.”

“I knew that already.”

“Don’t get cocky, so did I. She can give the people what they want.”

Thor pursed his lips.

“And that is?” he says.

Loki leans in closer, his bright eyes earnest in their mischievousness.

“An idol,” Loki says.

-

Valkyrie makes it a point not to interact with anyone. She does not recognise this generation of Asgardians, nor recognise their culture, or stories, or memories. Several millennia in Sakaar has made her stumble over the words of the prayers for the departed, forget the values of corporate responsibility over singular survival. There is not even a familiar city landscape to remind her that she is Asgardian in her core, no nostalgic scent of the flowering trees to ground her instinct. Thor does not need to know Valkyrie intimately to suspect that she regrets coming.

When Thor finds her, she is drinking. This already bodes ill for him. Not that drink makes Valkyrie hardened. They only have so many supplies to last them, and Thor knows that he does not have enough alcohol on this ship to bribe her. But she is not gulping down oceans like she had done before; she huddles in a utility closet, between a mop and a bucket of rags, cradling a small bottle of whiskey as if it is a candle that gives her light in the dark. She flinches when Thor opens the door.

“How did you find me?” she says.

“Heimdall,” says Thor.

She grits her teeth. Thor nudges the mop aside.

“May I?” he says.

“Fine,” she says.

He turns on the light and sits down next to her. He keeps the door open for the both of them. She is still wearing the full armor that she had fought in two days ago and two millennia ago.

“How are you?” says Thor.

Valkyrie shrugs.

“Could be worse,” she says. “But could be better.”

She takes another swig of the whiskey. She looks to Thor, as if to consider letting him have a drink, but then ultimately decides against it.

“Might be better if you sat in a proper room,” says Thor.

Valkyrie snorts.

“Too crowded,” she says.

“And Sakaar was spacious?” says Thor.

Valkyrie’s eyebrow twitches, but she does not argue. Thor hesitates; Valkyrie owes him nothing, and Thor owes her nearly everything. It is not that he fears owing to someone, but that he can never give back as much as he needs to receive. Inadequacy is more discomforting than debt.

“I need to ask something from you,” Thor says.

Valkyrie blows a wet raspberry of exasperation.

“Can’t give me a break first?” she says.

“I’m afraid not,” says Thor.

Valkyrie lets her head fall back, before she turns to him.

“What, then?” she says. “What do you hope that I will do?”

“Reveal yourself to the people as a Valkyrior,” says Thor.

Valkyrie’s jaw sets immediately.

“And here I’ve been lying so low,” she says. “Don’t I deserve to retire?”

“Their spirits are so low,” says Thor. “We’ve just lost our entire home. We’ve lost our friends, and family, and neighbors. We’ve lost--everything.”

“I can give none of that to them.”

“No. But you can show them that they are not lost.”

Valkyrie’s eyebrows furrowed. Thor held his breath, anticipating her refusal.

“You want me to play the hero,” she says. She laughs hollowly. “The legendary warrior. Like the echo of a bygone glory.”

“Not even glory,” says Thor. “I don’t care about puffing Asgard’s ego. We haven’t a leg to stand on. But for them to know that one of the Valkyrior is among them--they will have hope, that there is still strength in us. That we will not perish.”

“They will not perish because of _your_ leadership,” says Valkyrie. “Not mine. I’m not here to stand there and look pretty. You don’t need me for this.”

“No,” says Thor. “Perhaps I don’t need you for it. But I want your help, Valkyrie.”

“What for?” says Valkyrie. She raises her half-finished bottle. “Look at me, Thor. If the people see me and realise I was of the Valkyrior, the only Valkyrior left after total _defeat_ at the hands of Hela, they will lose what little hope they have left. You’re better off without me. Don’t you think you can handle it on your own?”

Thor knows that he ought to. A master is served, but a king serves others. But as he thinks about standing alone, all desperate eyes upon him, the weight of everyone’s lives pressing down on every side of him, he dreads the next day, and the next, and the next.

“My childhood friends have perished,” Thor says suddenly.

Valkyrie pauses. She shifts on the ground so that she faces him where she sits.

“That’s,” she says. “Well, that’s rough as hell. I get it.”

Thor smiles wryly. Valkyrie’s shoulders slump, and she hands Thor the bottle of whiskey. He takes a small swig of it; it burns in a way that is familiar, that needles at him to take another sip, and another, but he does not.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“One of them,” says Thor. “Lady Sif. She would have loved to meet you. The Valkyrior were her heroes. She became a warrior of the guards because of you all. The first maiden in the guard.”

Valkyrie gives a half-smile, but she has no words to say. Thor does not begrudge for it, only feels guilty for putting her in an uncomfortable position.

“Well, if she’s in Valhalla, she’ll meet the others,” says Valkyrie. “She’s probably delighted now.”

Thor nods mutely. It is strange to share this grief with a virtual stranger. She has never met the Warriors Three, or Sif. She had despised Asgard up until recently, and even then still nurses a fragile wound. But she also understands what it is like to lose so much in one swoop. Still, there are differences. Thor still has Loki, for however briefly until Loki chooses to leave, which will be inevitable, which will be expected. Thor still remains with Asgard, because his people need him and he needs them. Valkyrie lost everything, and everyone, and fled to survive even more alone.

“Have _you_ no hope to spare for your people?” Valkyrie says.

“No,” Thor says immediately.

“Then,” she says. “You look to me for your encouragement. Is that what you’re saying?”

“No,” says Thor.

“Then what?” says Valkyrie. “Do you not believe that your people will make it?”

Thor opens his mouth, and then closes it.

“I do believe,” Thor says. “But I need help believing.”

She opens her mouth immediately, as if to retort, and what of my unbelief? What am I supposed to believe in? How could I help when I am just a warrior, not a savior? But she does not say it, and if she had Thor does not know what he would have told her.

-

The tattoos on Valkyrie’s arm are bright ink, but they buy Thor time, and buy Asgard hope.

Children flock to Valkyrie, eyes round with awe and nervousness at the presence of a legend. Even their parents who had grown up with stories of the brave warriors who defended Asgard to their last breath spoke in hushed voices around her. They treat her like a goddess, and she wants everything but. They ask her of her adventures, and she hesitates. They ask her of her fellow Valkyrior, and she wants nothing more than to throw herself out of the ship and let her lungs calcify. Instead, she smiles, and answers briefly, if not tersely, because the tale of losing all whom she loved to the very one who killed all whom they loved does not an encouraging word make. But it is enough, for now, to spin a sense of assurance in them, that if legends can survive, then perhaps so can they.

It gives Thor a little more time. He had earlier arranged pods for Korg and his companions to return to their homes and families, after years of enslavement. Thor regrets this uneasily; Korg had made the children laugh, and he had made Thor laugh as well. But Meek’s eyes had lit up when Thor brought up a map for him, pointing out that his home planet was only a day’s trip away by pod. It is a wee planet, with electric jungles but little sunlight, and even though Korg had offered, Thor knew that Asgard will not thrive here. They had said their goodbyes, and when the freedmen of Sakaar broke off in the pods to return home, Thor felt a pang of uncomfortable jealousy.

While Valkyrie is asked to tell the tales of Asgard’s victories and adventures, Thor tends to the decrepit state of their kingdom. Bits of floating rock would cause damage that needs repair on the ship, and water is running low. He arms himself with nails and hammers, with wrenches and screws, and wipes the sweat from his brow. And occasionally, Loki will help.

“A little more to the left,” Loki says.

Thor grunts, his hands chapped and sweaty as he shifts the pipe to Loki’s instruction.

“I said a little, not hurl it as left as possible.”

“Do you mind?” says Thor.

Thor moves the pipe a mite back to the right, and when Loki does not complain, Thor tightens the screws.

“How’s that?” Thor says. “Try it.”

Loki turns the faucet. After a parched rattle, a little stream of water pours from it.

“It’s not changed very much,” Loki says.

Thor curses.

“All right, turn it off,” says Thor. “Let me have a second go at it.”

Loki turns off the water. On any other given day, Loki would leave it running, so that Thor would receive a jet of water spraying on his face when he removes one of the pipes. The fact that Loki is relatively docile means that their prospects are slim. Thor tries not to think about it as he takes apart another pipe, and finds them blocked and unattended to.

“You know that as a king you can delegate these sort of duties,” says Loki.

“Would you like a go at this?” Thor says, tossing the wrench to Loki. Loki dodges it. “Everyone is busy.”

“Arranging morale-boosting community events and managing mealtimes,” says Loki.

“What do you want them to do? Write an opera?”

Thor cleans out the pipe with a rag at the end of a stick.

“They are grumbling,” says Loki.

“Not at the moment,” says Thor. “Not when Valkyrie is with them.”

“It’ll only be for a while,” says Loki. “Until they realise that she is as vulnerable as they are.”

“Then I’ll absorb all the pessimistic work until then,” says Thor. “The last thing any of us need right now is a coup d’etat.”

After Thor is relatively satisfied, he returns the pipe to its proper place, and tightens it in position.

“Try again,” Thor says.

Loki turns the faucet; it gurgles, and spills a little more water. Thor strikes at the pipe, once, twice, and then the faucet sputters, and the water pressure swells into something relatively adequate.

“That’s as good as it will get,” says Loki. “Until we simply run out of water.”

Thor pulls away and stretches himself on the floor. He closes his eye; his arms are fine, but it is his hands, which have been clutching a wrench or twisting at tiny screws that are cramping, his knuckles worn out. Loki collects the water in a glass; it takes half a minute for it to be full.

“You remember the wizard on Midgard?” says Thor.

“Wizard?”

“The man who made you fall for half an hour.”

“Oh. That bastard. What about him?”

“He could refill my beer within seconds. Without doing so much as raise his eyebrows.” Thor smacks his dry lips, and then laughs at himself. “He could make cups of tea out of thin air.”

“Are you trying to embarrass me?”

“It’s me dropping a hint. Can you figure out how to do that?”

Loki hands Thor the glass of water. Thor takes it, rather bemusedly, but he drinks it with gratefulness.

“If you find maybe a hundred forks that you don’t need, maybe I can turn them all to quails,” Loki says.

“Forks?” Thor says into his glass.

“Anything you care to spare. I’m sure there’s some collection of sex toys that the Grandmaster keeps around here that no one is using anymore.”

“Eating quails that were originally sex toys? I’d rather starve.”

Thor takes another sip of water before handing it to Loki to finish. Loki downs it quickly.

“How much further until Earth?” says Loki.

“I don't remember,” says Thor. “Maybe another forty light-years.”

Loki sits down next to Thor; Thor pushes himself back up to a sitting position, focused simply on breathing right, while he tries not to think about the whole herd of elephants in the room that he has no response to.

“What if they refuse to let us in?” says Loki.

It is not that Thor has not entertained the possibility. He may be friends with Midgardians, and regarded as a responsible hero amongst them, or at least the last time he has checked, but that does not mean that Midgard has an uninhabited, habitable island for four thousand Asgardians. Especially Asgardians of general hardier strength and power than mortals, who pose as a perceived threat simply by breathing. But he can only rest on shaky hope, because there are few places where Asgardians are welcome, and he does not want to think about that hefty possibility that they may be stranded on this ship for years.

“Then,” Thor says, “we’ll find somewhere else.”

“If the Midgardians will refuse their hero,” says Loki, “then so will the rest of the realms. Asgard isn’t exactly popular among them.”

Thor does not respond. Instead, he feels immediately exhausted.

“What would Father do?” he says to himself.

“Unleash his executioner upon them until everyone is slaughtered into submission,” says Loki.

Loki says it candidly, as if he means it to be lighthearted. It only makes Thor’s stomach feel like stone. This is the legacy that he has inherited: violence, aggression, and authority. Today, Thor feels small and weak, where the days are too long and the snatches of sleep that he can have at night are too short.

“And is that what effective kings must do?” says Thor.

“What king can stay benevolent?” Loki says. “And what benevolent king can stay?”

Thor wants to say himself, but he is not so naive into thinking that he can be an exception. There was once a time when he had admired his father, looked up to him as a role model and tried to match his footsteps. There was a time when he had told Odin that there had never been a wiser king, or a better father. Perhaps revelation is necessary for Thor, to see his father as the flawed and wretched man as they all had once been and are and will someday be. It still stings, and Thor aches for ignorant bliss in hindsight.

“Maybe in some upside-down kingdom,” says Thor, “where kings are servants and gain is not gold.”

Loki gives a wry smile, mildly charmed.

“Are you dreaming now, Thor?” he says.

Thor says nothing. Instead, he gets up, pours more water into the glass, and gives it to Loki.

“Come on, now,” he says. “There is much more to be done.”

-

Thor is having bad dreams.

He dreams about Loki stabbing him in the back. Or Valkyrie being fed up and stealing a ship back to Sakaar. Or Heimdall, telling him that he has failed, and led his people to folly. Or Odin, telling Thor that he has become exactly like him, and Thor’s stomach turns. Or Asgard, simply Asgard, and when Thor wakes up he immediately feels the anxiety rise in his stomach, before he even has a chance to entertain the idea of drifting back to sleep, and in the early fringes of the day he lies awake and paralyzed, curled up on his side and losing faith in everyone and himself while Loki’s soft, sleepy breathing tantalizes him.

Had Odin ever been afraid like this?

He tries to imagine what would be different if Odin were leading the people, and not Thor. Ignoring the fact that perhaps Hela would have never wreaked havoc on Asgard in the first place, Thor first concludes that Odin would not have necessarily done things better in any way. Then, he is filled with remorse, because Odin had changed, since those days with Hela, only that new information of something so old is the freshest in Thor’s mind, and while it seems unfair to judge Odin on something from the past just as Thor would be sorrowful to be known only by his brash self-centeredness before his first banishment, Thor cannot stop himself anyway.

So Thor turns his head, and he sees Loki still sleeping on the other side of the room, and Thor remembers in some strange sudden moment that he is an older brother as well as a king, and he wonders if he is doing a decent job at that at all on top of everything else.

He sits up, debates whether he will see Loki ever again if he leaves, before resigning himself and leaving the small room in which he, Loki, Bruce, and Valkyrie had huddled together in, partly out of a lack of another choice and partly out of desperation. In the end, they all only had each other left, and they are all virtually strangers.

He finds Heimdall at the helm of the ship, steering them through the galaxies. When Thor enters, Heimdall gives a soft nod of acknowledgement to the window.

“You aren’t getting enough sleep,” Heimdall says.

Thor grunts. He stands next to Heimdall, observing the endless spread of stars. Home is on neither of them, so it is a wonder what exactly they are flying for.

“Neither are you,” says Thor.

“I don’t quite need it as much as you,” says Heimdall.

Thor hums. He looks to Heimdall, and a question pricks him like a thorn at his side, one that he wishes he could ignore, but cannot quite tear away from.

Thor processes out loud with Heimdall how he wants to proceed with his people--where they could possibly find food, what they could use to barter with if they find a realm that is willing and able to trade with them, what is the role of a realm that is small and sparse and if they even still count as a realm. After he irons his thoughts out, trying to speak over his own mounting emotions as he looks back at the glass, thinking he sees something explode, or he looks to the door, thinking he will hear a riot through the walls, he pauses.

“Have Korg and his companions made it to their home planet?” says Thor.

“Yes,” says Heimdall. “They’ve reunited with their people safely. You’ve done them well.”

Thor nods. He wonders if it would be a crime or a mercy if they are the only ones that Thor could help anymore.

“Heimdall,” says Thor.

“Yes, your highness?”

“Could you see Hela, when she was--cast away?”

Heimdall is silent at first. The hesitation alone makes Thor’s stomach twist. He knows that everyone keeps secrets, and everyone lies; this is nothing special. So he doesn’t understand why it affects him anymore, still.

“I knew of her,” Heimdall. “Yes.”

Thor wants to ask more, demand more answers, ask Heimdall about Odin, about why Odin would cast Hela away as if she never existed, if Odin held Hela’s hand as a child and played with her in the halls as Odin once did with Thor and Loki, if Odin was terrifying when he was bloodthirsty, if there was anything salvageable of Odin’s memory. But Thor does not ask, because he is tired, and he wants to forgive his father someday.

“Have the other realms gotten our message that Asgard is destroyed?” Thor says, returning to his crown, his throne, asking Heimdall as a king rather than as a young man who was raised under Heimdall’s watch.

“Yes,” says Heimdall. “Jotunheim and Vanaheim are aware. Alfheim has received it, and has been trying to contact other realms to confirm.”

“And what do they say?” says Thor.

“There are rumors,” says Heimdall, “that all of Asgard has perished. And other rumours that Asgard lives, and is ravaging other realms for conquest. Some realms live in fear that they are the next to be destroyed. Others--”

Heimdall pauses. Thor does not push him.

“Others suggest it is perhaps the Norns’ will,” says Heimdall. “Retribution.”

“How many say that?” says Thor.

Heimdall does not answer. Thor assumes that it would be the majority of the realms, then, that believe that Asgard is getting what it deserves. And perhaps they are right; they are not the slaves, like Korg and his fellows had been, escaping Sakaar for a chance at freedom and life. Asgard had been the enslavers, and even if the people in this ship with him were not even alive when Odin and Hela reigned, they nevertheless had lived on the foundations cemented with the blood of others.

“If it is retribution,” Thor says softly, “then am I supposed to just let it be? I don’t want to be the one to cheat justice.”

“Asgard has fallen,” says Heimdall. “Perhaps we’ve gotten what we deserve. Or perhaps we’ve gotten more than what we deserve. That’s for the Norns to determine, not you.”

Quiet. Thor wonders if all the other realms who relish in Asgard’s defeat believe the same thing, or if they will heap judgment on them. Or if the several millennia between Hela’s rule and now, with brokered peace and sworn, loyal protection, ever softened the blow. Thor struggles to differentiate the past from the present, even though none of this is by any means his first experience with disillusionment. He loves his home, and his people, and will make peace with their history in due time. But he fears if anyone else can, or if they ever will, and the thought is isolating. At Asgard’s most vulnerable, he cannot imagine any realm doing so much as take pity on them anymore.

“Do you think there is any chance for us on Earth?” says Thor.

Heimdall turns to face him. His golden eyes look rather regretful.

“Midgard is stricken by its own sorrows,” says Heimdall. “They do not know what to do with even the people on their own realm. Some realms do not have enough food, others not enough homes. Others not enough love. They have no reason to love us, let alone house us.”

Thor turns away from the great expanse of space that would not bat an eye if all of his people and their families were sucked into a black hole and into nothingness. He does not know why it is important to him, but he tells himself that at the very least, maybe Jane would mourn Asgard if she ever knew that they had died, but that is about it. But the truth is so much simpler: whether they would starve to death or are attacked or are left lost and abandoned among the floating rocks, no one would notice, and if they did, there would be no reason to care.

I need no one’s care, Thor tells himself, not out of bitterness or resentment, but of mettle. If Asgard must survive simply out of spite, then so be it. If realms would rather bemoan Asgard’s victories than celebrate it, then so be it. Asgard is important to _him_ and to the people here, and that should be enough. He clings to this as a drowning man would to a raft, trying to clamber aboard, terrified of flipping it over if he scrambles too desperately.

Then, he is a child again under Heimdall’s watch.

“Is Loki still sleeping?” Thor asks.

Rather, is Loki still here. Heimdall turns his gaze.

“Yes,” says Heimdall. “But you and I both know that he can create illusions.”

“I know,” Thor says.

He turns to leave, to rejoin the hall. He thinks, for a moment, to check on Loki, if he is truly still in that makeshift bedroom or if he is merely a mirage, but then he decides against it, and arrives to the hall in time to help the team of Asgardians who prepare breakfast. The coiled pit in his stomach does not unravel until noon.

-

“Does he even know what he is doing?”

Thor pauses. Valkyrie, who is walking beside him, stops as well. They are walking in a long hall, after having taken into account all the goods in this ship that can be spared for transformation, in case Thor truly does need to take Loki up on his offer of magicking quails out of spoons, or for trade if they could offer anything in exchange for shoes. Hushed, harsh voices seep from under one of the closed doors.

“How do we know that he is leading us to safety?” says one. “We might as well have been flying in circles.”

“Do any of you even know our intended destination?”

There is an incoherent mutter. Thor feels that heavy weight in his chest again, which twists everything in his core.

“We barely even have enough food to take care of everyone,” says another. “My children go to bed hungry. Our _water_ is running low. We cannot keep going on like this. We’ll be a ship full of skeletons.”

“We have allies in Vanaheim. Surely we should have thought of going there for help.”

“And Alfheim! What of Alfheim?”

They look to Alfheim for aid, and Vanaheim, and all the other realms that only regarded Asgard as a shield, as extra padding against the dangers outside. Thor’s own people do not look to him, who is sweating blood and tears to keep this ship afloat, and instead of burning with anger Thor feels the pit in his stomach, heavy and sickening, like he is magnetically drawn to the depths below and it takes all his strength to stay upright.

“Have none of these crossed the prince’s head?”

“Perhaps they would not answer to him,” says another. “They were allies with King Odin, not Thor.”

“At this rate, it would be better if we just succumbed in Asgard--”

Thor moves forward, past the door, determined to hear nothing more. Valkyrie moves forward, and takes a hard left into the room.

“Well!” she says, the moment she throws open the door.

Thor is a little ways ahead, and he halts immediately when he hears Valkyrie’s voice intrude on the meeting of disgruntled Asgardians. He should probably keep moving, pretend he has not heard anything and not engage in rumors and grumbling if only to save his own head. But he also finds that he wants to know what Valkyrie will say.

“I see we’ve got a couple of governance administrators among us,” she says. Her voice reverberates, with her hands firmly on her hips and her legend presumably paralyzing the room. “Would any of you lot care to help us out? We’ve got about five cases of illness to administer medicine to, a malfunctioning power fuse to rewire, messages to pass to the leaders of the Nine Realms, what else? Ah! We have a lot of cleanup to do, assuming of course that you’d like a bite of meat at some point in the next several days, moving at a speed of seventy thousand leagues per hour. Not to mention if you want to survive once we actually land near civilization to get food and supplies for all our people. And of course, the king has been juggling _all_ of this on his own, so he certainly could use some hands, can’t he?”

The men in the room stutter to a stony silence. Thor can practically hear Valkyrie simper.

“Some realms have kings who see their subjects as nothing but scraps to gamble with for their pleasure,” says Valkyrie. “Perhaps you should have had a longer chat with Korg and his friends to realise just how fortunate you are.”

She leaves the room without another word, and joins Thor at his side.

“There,” says Valkyrie, as they match each other’s stride, and keep their faces forward. “You can never say that I don’t respect you.”

Thor cannot help it. His nose burns.

-

“Any messages from the other realms, Heimdall?”

“None.”

“Responses from other ships in the area?”

“None.”

“All right. Thank you.”

-

Not all the families upon this ship are broken. Thor will occasionally recognize a full family, the parents, their children, even their grandparents, all clumped together, helping to clean the sheets or the plates. He feels like he is too old to be jealous, to avert his gaze pointedly so that he does not have to watch, and remember, and wonder, and regret. But it doesn’t matter; immediately he tells himself, don’t think about it, which promptly starts him, no matter how much he scolds himself.

And in those moments, as a form of distraction, Thor tells himself not to think about where Loki is. Thor has grown enough in these years to know that he should not count on Loki, and yet his arm automatically itches to reach for him, to make sure he is there, to hurl a plate at him and watch him catch it. Thor wants to live for another day, and then another, and another--thus he cannot have faith in Loki.

He will find his own family, somehow. He has Heimdall--and the Hulk, who has been more present than Banner. He does not know if he should count Valkyrie. He would like to, but it would be out of symmetry, rather than need. Neither of them need the other to feel safe.

Feeling safe is relative. Despite the unsettling dreams and wakeful worries, Thor realizes that he must have felt some level of safe, because right now, he feels like his world is falling apart.

He wakes up in the middle of the night--and immediately his thoughts are flooded with the dread of everything that has mounted up to this point, so the hope of falling back asleep is essentially dead. He remains still, lying on his side as he reminds himself that Asgard has gone through worse and survived (he doesn’t know of many examples, but it sounds like something he ought to think about), and that he is at the very least competent enough to not drive the ship straight into the sun. When the most that that does for him is numb him, he finally sits up, and realizes that Loki is not here.

Well, Thor thinks. What did he expect?

He stands up and leaves the room as quietly as possible to not wake Valkyrie or the Hulk, either of which Thor has no intentions of finding out who is the crankiest. He closes the door behind him and forces himself to walk steadily, even though his heart is convinced that he is sprinting.

This is normal, Thor tells himself with each carefully measured step. This is expected. This is exactly how he knew Loki would be.

Thor impresses even himself, that he does not break out into a run. Perhaps it is because his legs feel like they are hauling stones for feet. Better this way--he will not wake up any of his people, and cause any alarm. He can bottle that all into himself.

He does not go to Heimdall. He weaves through the outermost halls, willing himself to remember to breathe, to remember that this is expected, expected, expected. And so, when he finds that one opened escape pod, its doors unlocked and supplies stowed in the corner, and Loki keying in coordinates on the dashboard, Thor does not feel anything other than heavy, crushing release.

“Is this it?” Thor says.

Loki turns sharply. When he sees Thor, he does not react readily, which is the most peculiar.

Thor stares at Loki, daring him to laugh, to throw a knife at him before sailing away into space. He dares him to do exactly what Thor knows he would do, and yet his heart is racing in anticipation, as if he could hope for anything different.

“Well?” Thor says.

Loki straightens; his jaw twitches with annoyance.

“I’m a little busy,” says Loki.

Thor opens his mouth, and then closes it. He wonders if Loki even considers this betrayal, if he acts more annoyed at being caught than boastful, or if Loki thinks that Thor has expected this as much as Thor ought to have.

“Running Asgard isn’t to your liking anymore,” says Thor. “Is it?”

Loki does not reply. Instead, he turns his back to Thor again, busying himself with the holographic map on the dashboard. Thor finds that he cannot move. He can only stand, his hands lame at his sides, watching Loki map out a getaway route.

“It’s just a matter of precaution,” Loki says without turning around.

“Precaution,” says Thor. “And what would that be for?”

Loki flashes an easy smile over his shoulder. It makes Thor’s muscles stiffen.

“Has that ever mattered with me?” says Loki.

Thor almost responds. Almost opens his mouth to say, well, go on then. Our paths have diverged a long time ago, and I was counting down the minutes to this moment, honestly. And all of this is true--Thor had known that he cannot expect Loki to stay with him. So this should not hurt as much as it does.

He almost responds, and he leaves instead.

Thor walks, as if none of this matters, as if he is about to go on to the rest of the night, going back to bed or having a nightcap, or simply walking these halls alone. This is expected, he screams to himself. He expected this, he expected this, he expected this--and yet, disappointment sinks deeper into his skin than a knife in his back has ever done.

It is Thor’s own fault, that he is upset. It is his own fault if he has any hope that Loki would stay, that Loki would not leave. This is laughably predictable, painfully avoidable, and yet something tender inside Thor breaks, something that he wishes he protected but hadn’t known was there before.

Maybe he should run back, and drag Loki back out of the escape pod, yell at him as he always does, as if nothing has changed and Thor has learned nothing. Loki would probably snarl and leave in an angrier huff than if Thor leaves him alone. And Thor will be back here because there is no stopping Loki when he wants to be free. And there is no stopping Thor from just _wishing_ , however much he knows he is a fool for doing so, that people would just stop leaving him behind.

Thor reaches the empty hall, where the lights have all been shut off and what light is left is trickling from the wide window where the starlight is harvested. It is empty, save the sleek throne by the window, and at the sight of it, Thor suddenly feels a sharp tear in his soul. He thinks of Odin, and how Odin has abandoned him, left him to clean up the mess that Odin has saved just for him, how Odin’s parting wisdom has never prepared him for this. Why did you leave me, he thinks. Why did you leave me? He thinks of Frigga, who was the first to go, who was the glue in their family that broke apart, who left not by choice but left anyway. Why did you leave me? He thinks of Mjolnir, who was never alive but felt so very much alive, because it was his honor and protection and justification. Why did you leave me? He thinks of his friends, who had stayed by his side even when he was brash and cruel, who are now just stardust when he needs them the most. Why did you leave me?

And then Loki, his brother, perhaps even his friend again, who is too flitting to pin down, who has no reason to want to stay even though Thor is at the ends of his rope and cannot bear to be alone anymore. This is too much, Thor wants to cry out. This is all too much right now. He has been grieving alone since he thought Loki had died on Svartalfheim, and now he will continue to, when he will look up in this very hall and look upon all that is left of his people and realise that he doesn’t recognise any of their faces.

Thor sits against the side of the window, back against the sill as if he is a child again. He wants to go home. But Asgard is gone, and Asgard is here, and Asgard is nowhere all at the same time. Home is not a place, it is a people, and they are leaving him one by one, until he will have no home left.  He had no idea how safe he had felt until now when he feels like the black holes will consume him alive. His bones shake alongside the stars that shimmer like smudges, arranged in foreign constellations that remind him nothing of stories he knows.

“Thor.”

Loki’s voice makes Thor’s heart jolt. He does not turn his head.

“Did you want a more dramatic farewell?” Thor says.

If Loki leaves, Thor will regret this coldness. But until then, he does not have the energy to even feign indifference.

Loki steps closer; it is dark both inside and outside, so Thor does not see Loki’s reflection, only his form within the peripheral. Thor resists the urge to reach out and touch Loki’s foot, to assure him that he is not a vision.

“I’m not leaving,” says Loki.

He crouches next to Thor, staring out the window as well. His lips are pressed into a thin, uncomfortable line, and he searches the stars for something in particular, although what it is Thor does not know. Thor turns to Loki, and feels shamefully like a pity case.

“If you want to go,” says Thor, “then go.”

It is a miracle that Loki has stayed at all. Thor takes in deep breaths, encasing his heart with iron with each inhalation. He cannot help it if it breaks from the inside, but at least he can protect it from being pierced by anything else.

Loki turns his gaze to Thor. He narrows his eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Loki says. “Not now.”

“Then when?” says Thor. “Tomorrow? A week from now?”

Loki does not reply. Thor turns back to the window again; it is one of the quieter moments that they share, the first in a long time. Thor can only think about how it will not last.

“You’re not upset at me, are you?” Loki says.

Thor does not reply. Somehow, this makes Loki more visibly uncomfortable.

“What if I warn you ahead of time?” says Loki. “Five hours notice?”

Thor clenches his teeth. Loki sighs exasperatedly.

“I mean, obviously I thought of offering you a ride as well,” says Loki. “But considering your loyalty complex I doubted that you would want that. But if you can bear to shed it, I suppose you can come along.”

Thor does not know what to say, and evidently Loki does not either. Thor avoids making eye contact with Loki, and the fresh pangs of resigned dread echo in his stomach again. Thor knows that he cannot stop Loki from leaving, and he should not, and he would not when the time will come. That even if Loki will stay today, it will only mean that he will leave another, and Thor will have to face this inevitable punch in the stomach on another day, and perhaps a worse day than today. He cannot protect himself from sorrow. He is foolish to try.

“I’m not joking,” says Loki. “Just find me another empty can or something and I can turn it into an extra flask for water. We’ve shared tighter spaces before.”

“You know that I cannot,” says Thor. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” says Loki.

Thor does not explain further, so Loki does not ask again.

“I’m not leaving now,” says Loki.

“You will,” says Thor.

“I don’t know,” says Loki. “I’ve done nothing but sneak and escape. Perhaps it is a habit.”

“What are you running away from now?” says Thor.

Loki furrows his brow in thought.

“I’m just preparing,” says Loki. “In case.”

“In case?”

“There’s nothing safe about ships, Thor. When was the last time that you’ve ridden one that hasn’t crashed?”

Thor does not entirely believe Loki’s logic, but he does not know the right question to ask to understand better.

“You’re all that I have now, Loki,” says Thor.

Loki stumbles to a stop. Thor tiredly leans his head back against the edge of the window, his heart cut open, seeping through the iron plates that he tried so hard to use to hide the damage. He does not know what else to say, and he feels poorly that his words can be construed as guilting Loki into Thor’s bidding. But Thor cannot help it; he is weary, and he is scared, and the idea of facing the rest of the days without his brother makes his skin grow clammy and his breath grow short and all the fears he harbors for his people grow fangs.

“Well,” says Loki. “I’m afraid the feeling is mutual.”

His voice is heavy with regret. Which is why Thor believes it the most.

“Do you really think any of this can last?” says Loki.

“Which part?” says Thor.

“Us,” says Loki, with a snort. “Asgard, where it is now. Any of us, alive. No, it can’t last. I’d rather leave on a good note.”

“Leave on a good note?” says Thor. “No, that’s not what it would be. Just because you won’t look over your shoulder when you leave doesn’t mean that what you leave behind isn’t falling apart.”

Loki mulishly does not answer. There is something affectionately familiar of this, and when Thor instinctively reaches to push Loki’s shoulder, he lets himself be glad that Loki is there.

“Are you that scared?” says Loki.

“That’s incriminating to answer,” says Thor.

“You don’t need me,” says Loki. “You and I both know that. The most I’ve done is hold your extra hammers while you go build a cathedral, or whatever. Let’s be frank, brother. Even if I stay by your side forever, you will be no more or less afraid than if I left.”

Thor cannot help it; he looks at Loki incredulously. Not of what Loki is saying, because Thor knows reluctantly that Loki is right--he may hold tightly to Loki like Loki is a security blanket he can brave the dark with, but in the end the dark will still terrify Thor, because he still cannot see what lies ahead. He still clings tightly to the uncertainty of what lies ahead, and cannot relinquish it, even if he clings to Loki with the other hand. It is rather the fact that Loki can see through Thor, and still understand him, despite everything that they thought that they lost. Loki is not what is keeping Thor’s world from falling apart.

“I cannot stop you, and I will not,” Thor says. “But if--or when-- you leave, you’d at least call, or keep in touch. You wouldn’t be away forever, would you?”

“Thor,” says Loki. “I essentially _died_ and I still ended up running into you again.”

Thor’s lips twitch into a half smile. It is not the peace that he needs, not the assurance and promise that he can lay down everything at its feet. But for now, it is enough.

“Weren’t you the one who agreed that perhaps it would be better if we never saw each other again?” says Loki.

He says it rather accusingly, as if embarrassed for his own twinge of the heart when they echoed each other in that elevator. Thor lets out a hollow laugh.

“Perhaps it would be better,” says Thor. “That doesn’t mean _I_ want it.”

A beat.

“Neither does it mean I want it,” says Loki.

They sit quietly, for a moment, letting all of this sink into them. Until at one point, neither of them realising it, they’ve fallen asleep right there, at the foot of the window.

-

When the gargantuan ship rises before theirs, Thor knows--every fear that he had harbored since he had ushered his people onto a precarious, terrified ship has now been justified.

He does not know whose ship it is, only that when it rises, Loki immediately backs away from the window. It is enough for Thor to let the lightning crackle between his fingers.

“Who is that?” says Thor.

Loki turns sharply to Thor. Something flashes past Loki’s eyes, but before Thor can suspect anything of it, Loki acts.

“We should gather the people,” says Loki.

At the mention of their people, Thor follows. Loki moves ahead, his pace rigid as if he is under watch. Thor knows that he should be on his guard. That now everything that people expect of him, hope of him and need from him has come to this moment. He does not know what this ship is, and what they want, only that he could hear his people’s shaking voices cry out in worry at something so massive and invulnerable.

“Loki,” says Thor. “Who is that?”

“We don’t have time,” Loki says.

His voice is coated with fear. Thor’s breath constricts.

“What do they want?” says Thor.

The lights in the ship flicker. There are screams of terror from the main deck. Loki jumps, his chest heaving with useless breath.

“We need to get away from it,” says Thor.

“There’s no outrunning this ship,” says Loki. “No, we’ll need to…”

His jaw tightens, and he beckons for Thor to continue walking. He takes Thor down the halls, which Thor has trouble getting used to, because this ship is so massive, and he swears that he once knew its layout. As the lights cease to flicker, but the ship trembles, and the people sound further and further away.

“Come on,” Loki says.

“We need to communicate with that ship,” says Thor. “If it will stop us, we should--”

“And what would you say?” says Loki. “What sort of deal would you strike to save your life?”

There is something biting in Loki’s words, not so much towards Thor but as if he gnaws at himself, as an animal would bite its own paws in times of stress. Thor took Loki by the shoulder to stop him from running, and turn him towards Thor.

“Loki,” says Thor. “What do you know?”

Loki turns to Thor. He gives Thor an appraising look.

“Get help,” Loki says.

“I don’t think throwing you at the ship would do us any good,” Thor says.

Loki laughs, in a rather damning, stinging way. Thor tightens his grip on Loki’s shoulder, until he could almost break Loki’s bone. Loki stiffens at the pain.

“Drop the illusion, Loki,” Thor says. “Now.”

A muscle jumps in Loki’s jaw. Regret flashes past Loki’s face, as the illusion peels back with green-gold shimmer. The hallway that they are in, which looks as if it will lead to the main hall, sheds its skin to reveal that it is actually the outer hall, lined with escape pods, one of the pods’ doors open.

Thor opens his mouth, but before he can speak, Loki shoves him into the escape pod, the one that he had been preparing only just days earlier, and slammed his hand against the button. The door shuts airtight, while Thor rushes forward, pressing against the small glass window between him and Loki.

“Loki--” says Thor.

“Find help,” says Loki. “And if you come too late, run.”

But Thor does not hear what Loki says, with their breaths fogging the windowpane. Loki’s mouth moves, and then he pushes a button on the control pad, and the escape pod breaks loose from the ship, shooting into the folds of space with its coordinates entered to take Thor as far and as fast as possible. Thor is thrown down to the ground, gasping air, and by the time he gathers himself to his feet and looks out of the glass, the ship and his people are but a speck, and the pod flies so quickly that the starlight streams all around him, like the currents of a river.

-

Loki will never mistake himself for being noble. What he plans to do, he knows can easily still lead to the rest of Asgard dying. No matter how skilled someone is at bartering, one could never outbid Death’s titan. He will also never mistake himself for being entirely self-sacrificial. What he plans to do, he reckons that he has at least a thirty percent chance of surviving. Those chances are slim; Thanos has never explicitly promised survival, only less pain. Unfortunately for the both of them, Loki has realised a better, less costly method of easing his pain, and it is his brother.

What he knows for sure is that he is selfish. Because of all four thousand people on this ship, he only wants Thor to not die.

His illusion now taken down, Loki can see now that the lights have been shut off, leaving only the emergency lights that pin prick the corners of the walls and the ceiling. His fingers twitch, and in between the folds of reality he feels the Tesseract in his grasp.

And so he runs.

Thanos’ ship has not noticed the escape pod, moving in hyperspeed to the distant reaches of the galaxy, and perhaps Thor can gather a new force to rescue the universe, or perhaps stow away in the edges to survive, oh Norns, if only Thor could do just that, stay away and survive. But Loki knows Thor too well; Thor will gather a force, an army, the favor of fate, and he will either defeat Thanos or survive. There can be no alternative.

Loki regrets it, if only because even if they both realize that the other will not keep them from being afraid, then the fact that Thor would be proud of Loki, and tell him well done, and tell him that it would be what Thor himself would do. Thor would have done everything to protect his people, and die for them, wherein lies the rub, because Thor is more useful alive than dead, and the sun shines brighter when Thor is alive rather than dead. If Loki could do anything that he would be proud of, it would be to keep Thor alive, even if Thor will spend the rest of his life cursing him.

The ship shakes; claws from Thanos’ ship latches onto their tiny, vulnerable frigate. Loki runs past his people who cry out in terror, the butchers and the cobblers and none of them warriors. Children weep; if Thor were here, he would hold their hands and tell them promises that they would illogically believe. But Loki runs past them instead.

He pushes his way to the helm of the ship. When Heimdall sees him, he draws his sword, but Loki holds up a hand to stop him. He wishes he were fonder of Heimdall, that he would be satisfied that Heimdall of all people will be the only one to understand what he has done.

“Are you condemning us all?” says Heimdall, over the din of the creaking metal as Thanos tries to tear their ship apart.

“I’m saving us,” Loki says. “Or as much of us as we can.”

He rushes to the dashboard, and connects their communication port with the nearest ship to them--of Thanos. Loki hears their people crying out, and he knows that even though Thor is perhaps forty light years away, Thor can as well.

“You know who that is,” says Heimdall. “Even if he decides not to kill us all, enslaving us will be the kindest gesture.”

“Well,” says Loki. “That’s surviving, isn’t it?”

The ship jerks violently, and Heimdall and Loki stumble, clutching at the dashboard to keep on their feet. Loki turns sharply to Heimdall, who does not trust him, who has absolutely no reason to. He has just watched Loki shove Thor into a pod and sent him shuttling to Norns only know where, but he cannot read Loki’s mind or intentions.

“Don’t you trust Thor?” says Loki. In spite of everything, he smiles. “I do.”

He takes a breath, and pulls from the spaces in the dimension the Tesseract. It feels warm and trembling, but then Loki realises that that is his own hand. He closes his breath, and presses the Intercom button.

“Thanos,” he says. “I have it.”

And the ship goes still.


End file.
